Zebra 3 Report by Joe Anybody

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

All the videos I made in the last 30 days - Filming for Peace and Justice
Mood:

energetic
Now Playing: Joe Anybody Presents: 32 days and 36 video's in 2009
Topic: MEDIA

Posted by Joe Anybody at 8:02 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 16 December 2009 8:04 PM PST

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Genetic Engineers in Germany Destroy Dandelion
Mood:

crushed out
Now Playing: GM crops and mad science is screwing the planet and all you live on it
Topic: ENVIRONMENTAL

Genetic Engineers in Germany Destroy Dandelion

author: Jesse R. Taylor

e-mail: jrtayloriv@gmail.com

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/12/396173.shtml

............................................................................................................

Genetic engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology have created a mutated form of the dandelion that contains 500 times more latex than the naturally occurring variety, as well as producing high amounts of artificial sweetener. This will have terrible effects as one of the most useful edible and medicinal plants becomes genetically contaminated by the the toxic and inedible mutant.

The dandelion is a beautiful plant which is very beneficial to soil health; it is also one of the most useful edible and medicinal plants. The highly nutritious greens and flowers can be eaten raw in salads, or cooked. According to the USDA, a serving of uncooked dandelion leaves contains 280 percent of an adult's daily requirement of beta carotene as well as more than half the requirement of vitamin C. Dandelions are also rich in vitamin A. The roots make a delicious coffee substitute when roasted or can be boiled for 20-30 minutes for munching. The flowers can be used to make a delicious wine. The raw roots can be used as a mild laxative and diuretic, and the greens are known to help detoxify blood and stimulate the liver. Many other animals also eat dandelion -- it's an extremely important wildlife food.

Genetic engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology have recently created a mutant variety of the dandelion, which will create 500 times as much latex in it's sap so that they can use it to make rubber. Unfortunately, this will render the plant inedible, or at least extremely unpalatable -- and possibly toxic. It is also being engineered to create high levels of inulin, an artificial sweetener.

When this mutated variety is released into the wild, it cross-pollinates with natural varieties. Dandelions, due to the nature of their wind-carried seeds and ability to thrive in damaged ecosystems, rapidly spread over wide areas with genes from remote populations regularly intermingling. This mutant variety will quickly infect the entire planet with it's toxic genes, rendering a plant that has been used by humans and animals for thousands of years into an inedible rubber factory. The earth will permanently loose one of it's most magnificent species, so that we can have cheap rubber gloves and condoms, satisfying the greed of a few short-sighted agribusiness executives.

homepage: http://www.sporecollective.org

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:21 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 16 December 2009 7:24 PM PST

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Monday, 14 December 2009

Are you a Democrat
Mood:

hug me
Now Playing: Podcast by Joe Anybody reading this text about Hope & Change
Topic: POLITICS

http://zebra3report.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/podcastjoeanybodynumber8.mp3

The link at he top is myself reading the following article. It is a download and about 8 minutes long. Right click on the link at the top and then choose the option "save target as"

REPOSTING FROM:

http://liberalpro.blogspot.com/2009/12/are-you-democrat.html

Are you a Democrat? Well, if you are, I have some questions for you. It occurs to me that somewhere in the last decade (maybe longer),the differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have been blurred. I'm going to try to

break down why I believe the two political parties find themselves not only similar to each other, but in all actuality, mirror images. Let me begin by bringing up a few points about our touted two-party system.

There are those that seem to believe that the two party system is exactly what our founding fathers envisioned when they crafted our republic. The fact is that many of the founding fathers were opposed to political parties altogether. In fact, the two

political parties that are now dominant didn't exist until the mid nineteenth century. In our history, political parties have come and gone, and the republic continued to thrive. In fact, according to a recent show on the History channel;

“The framers of the Constitution of the United States made no provision in the governmental structure for the functioning of political parties because they believed that parties were a source of corruption and an impediment to the freedom of people to judge issues on their merits. James Madison argued in his “Federalist Paper #10” against a system in which “factions” (his word for parties) might be able to seize control of the government). George Washington, in accordance with the thinking of his fellow Founding Fathers, included in his cabinet men of diverse political philosophies and policies”

.

The problem with using the words of our founding fathers to justify anything political in this country is that politicians are adept at taking portions of what’s been said and using the words of great Americans completely out of context. One only has to look at Barack Obama’s speech the other day when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. In that speech he said;

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Barack Obama then attempted to justify his actions by invoking what had been said by Martin Luther King, a man he tries to emulate, but apparently doesn’t understand.

“I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.”

I’m not at all surprised that Barack Obama invokes MLK to justify his actions. Some will see this as an attempt to bring reason and idealism to his recent decisions. People will see what they want to see. Sadly, there is nothing idealistic in what Obama is doing in Afghanistan or the rhetoric he uses against Iran. There is nothing altruistic about occupying seven new military bases in Columbia, just as there is nothing commendable about supporting the rigged elections in Honduras that installed a right-wing illegitimate regime.

As we close out another year, I am reminded of the promises that Senator Obama made when he campaigned for the presidency. When, during the campaign, I wrote about the corporations that spent millions to support Obama through “bundling” (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other investment houses), I was told in comments that this was just politics as usual and that Obama was just “playing the game” to get elected and that I was a Republican troll that was trying to put him in a bad light. When I mentioned that he refused to take nuclear weapons “off the table” and that he wanted to expand the war in Afghanistan, I was called a liar.

I remember blasting him for failing to vote against the FISA bill that would give the telecom’s immunity for providing wiretaps to the Federal government. Still, I was told over and over again in comments that he was better than McCain.

Sometimes I wonder if he is indeed better than McCain. At least if McCain had won the election the American people would understand what kind of man was running the country. The most troubling thing about Obama is that there are people out there that still believe that behind the decisions to expand the war in Afghanistan while rattling the saber’s against Iran and reviving the 5th Fleet for duty in Latin America and propping up right wing governments there, that deep inside of Obama, there is this liberal, moral man that we have yet to see.

During the campaign, Obama promised that military commissions would cease, that Guantanamo would be closed within the year, that secret CIA prisons would be closed and extraordinary renditions would cease. Guantanamo is still open, the CIA prisons are still operating at Bhagram Airbase and other locations are still open and people are still spirited away to foreign prisons. People are still dying in Iraq; we have just allocated 1.4 Trillion dollars for the defense budget which includes the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the 16 intelligence agencies that the military operates. We have military bases in 177 countries with more opening every day.

Make no mistake, Obama is counting on military means to insure the continuing supply of oil and to keep China and Russia encircled. One may ask why NATO still exists and keeps expanding long after the Warsaw Pact has become a footnote in the history books. You may like to believe that in the 21st Century the world would be a more civilized place, but peace will continue to be an elusive thing as long as we rely on brute force to implement our foreign policy.

Our War/Peace President and his administration refused to sign the Land Mine Treaty that has been signed by 157 other nations . This is a very interesting development in that landmines are responsible for thousands of innocents being injured every year. From nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and landmines, there seems to be no weapon that the United States won’t embrace.

For those that believe we are better off with the “progressive” Obama in office, it’s time to think again. The sad part of this charade is that in 2012, if we survive until then, the Republicans will run a candidate that will be more unacceptable than Obama. The Congressional critters will continue to be funded by corporate America, and there will be no change on the horizon. I could say that the Republicans and Democrat have long outlived their usefulness, but that will be met with skepticism and disbelief by a majority of Americans that believe these two co-opted political parties still represent real democracy, if indeed they ever did.

Maybe in the near future enough people will take the time out of their busy lives and envision a future where the Democrats and Republicans have been relegated to the dust bin of history. Think of a time when we can vote for individuals with vision instead of voting for a political brand. Change will not be broadcast through our media that has a deep working relationship with the two major political parties and their corporate overlords. Real change will come from the voices of reason found in communities. If ever this country needed to listen for answers, it’s now.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 10:25 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 15 December 2009 12:15 AM PST

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Sunday, 13 December 2009

My Notes
Mood:

bright
Now Playing: anti war notes
Topic: WAR

Hello Z3 Readers here is a recreation from some notes I found scratched on a small piece of paper that I must written from an anti war meeting, and then latter misplaced this small paper with the follow words.

(From top to bottom side one)

“Book”

“On Killing” ß Dan

Sir No Sir

“The Nine For Peace’

FTA show (For Travel Army)

Jane Fonda

2 killed in Jackson State

(From top to bottom side two)

“Another World Is Possible”

Radio Firt Termer

WORMS

Openly

Resist

Military

Stupidly

18 a day suicide

Rita Sing Sing

1971 FTA show

“Vietnam song”

Posted by Joe Anybody at 10:01 PM PST

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Saturday, 12 December 2009

The People Speak (links included)
Mood:

bright
Now Playing: Howard Zinn - TV - and - WebSite information
Topic: POLITICS

The People Speak airs on History

On Sunday, December 13, at 8 PM Eastern and Pacific / 7 PM Central

THE PEOPLE SPEAK

The long awaited documentary film inspired by Howard Zinn's books A People's History of the United States and, with Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People's History of the United States will air on History

Tune in!

More details are at

http://www.history.com/peoplespeak

ABOUT THE PEOPLE SPEAK

Using dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans, the documentary feature film THE PEOPLE SPEAK gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice.

Narrated by acclaimed historian Howard Zinn and based on his best-selling books, A People's History of the United States and, with Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People's History, THE PEOPLE SPEAK illustrates the relevance of these passionate historical moments to our society today and reminds us never to take liberty for granted.

THE PEOPLE SPEAK is produced by Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove, and Howard Zinn, co-directed by Moore, Arnove and Zinn, and features dramatic and musical performances by Allison Moorer, Benjamin Bratt, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Chris Robinson, Christina Kirk, Danny Glover, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, David Strathairn, Don Cheadle, Eddie Vedder, Harris Yulin, Jasmine Guy, John Legend, Josh Brolin, Kathleen Chalfant, Kerry Washington, Lupe Fiasco, Marisa Tomei, Martín Espada, Matt Damon, Michael Ealy, Mike O'Malley, Morgan Freeman, Q'orianka Kilcher, Reg E. Cathey, Rich Robinson, Rosario Dawson, Sandra Oh, Staceyann Chin, and Viggo Mortensen.

_{MORE INFORMATION}

http://www.PeoplesHistory.us

http://www.facebook.com/Voices.Live

http://www.HowardZinn.org

http://www.facebook.com/HowardZinn

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:05 PM PST

Updated: Saturday, 12 December 2009 2:11 PM PST

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What the OPR Torture Report Will Not Say
Mood:

amorous
Now Playing: Torture Memos and Judge ByBee Bullshit: by David Swanson
Topic: TORTURE

What the OPR Torture Report Will Not Say

Annotated Aggression: Being Jay Bybee
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/48262

By David Swanson

It's October 23, 2002, and you're Jay Bybee, the man in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the United States Department of Justice. John Yoo and a bunch of other lawyers willing to claim that absolutely anything is legal work for you. But you'd much rather be a judge. That would be a cushy job, a lifetime job, a job with a book of the Bible named for it, a job where you would get to decide which crimes to legalize rather than being told by someone else, a job where you might eventually even get to rule on the legality of some of the crimes you were presently engaged in committing. At the moment, however, if you want to become a judge you're going to have to follow instructions, and that means legalizing the greatest crime of them all. Millions may die in the process, but you will get that nomination and you will become a judge.

You pray for divine guidance and sit down to write (or at least sign) this apology for, authorization of, and confession to mass murder, another term for which is often genocide. Here's your opening line in all caps:

"AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT UNDER DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW TO USE MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ"

This is a remarkable thing for you (or even Yoo, your psychotic sidekick) to have written, because the Constitution is the supreme law domestically, and it gives Congress the exclusive power to decide to wage war. And under the United Nations Charter, no nation has the authority to attack another. But you were Jay Bybee. You were the man. You were the authority handing out personalized torture laws for individual victims. You were, in fact, already a judge convicting and sentencing people in lengthy rulings before "legalizing" and imposing their sadistic punishments. Granting U.S. presidents the power to launch aggressive wars didn't trouble you in the way it might have someone who cared about people and their lives. But this single memo would mean far more pain and suffering than all of your soon-to-be-famous torture memos put together.

You added a bit more to your composition, about 50 pages more in fact. You (or whoever wrote this for you) began thus:

"The President possesses constitutional authority to use military force against Iraq to protect United States national interests."

Now you were showing off, digging yourself deeper. Now you would need to explain how the United States could have national interests in somebody else's distant nation that outweighed that nation's own interest in not being attacked or invaded.

And you were just warming up. You dug deeper:

"This independent constitutional authority is supplemented by congressional authorization in the form of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution."

This is apparently a reference to the 1991 version of this type of congressional buck passing. In fact, such a resolution could not alter the Constitution to either remove or augment anything. In addition, it was more than a decade old. That wouldn't faze you, Jay Bybee, because you'd already given the president "independent constitutional authority" to treat such an authorization as redundant and superfluous. Its primary purpose was to pack these pages and obscure the simplicity of your primary argument, if that's a name merited by your bald assertion that verily this is that.

You did some international digging too:

"Using force against Iraq would be consistent with international law because it would be authorized by the United Nations Security Council or would be justified as anticipatory self-defense."

Now you were digging deep indeed. By citing the two exceptions that the UN Charter makes to its ban on war, you were acknowledging its authority. But neither exception applied. The UN rejected a US attack on Iraq as something it could not authorize, and such an attack would -- of course -- not be self-defense. But that didn't matter either, because you'd already begun to alter the law. You invented something called "anticipatory self-defense." But international law did not recognize such a thing, and no international authority agreed that it legalized an attack on Iraq. Your citation-packed memo failed to present any citations for this hooey.

Through such alterations, of course, you were increasing the "legal" acceptability of almost any future war launched by any nation against any other.

What could possibly be more damaging? Or more well documented? Your crime is in black and white and continues for almost 50 more pages. Yet, as of December 2009, congressional committees were pretending to await a report on your memos from the Justice Department itself, with the incorporation of watering-down edits from you and your co-conspirators. Even bar associations were awaiting the same report before concluding that a desk-chair mass-murderer like you was unfit to be a lawyer.

Rule for civilians: first kill all the lawyers. Rule for lawyers: first kill everyone else?

This "memo" you were drafting for White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was going to be treated as a secret law, but it would remain on record as some sort of quasi-law after becoming public. Years later it still hasn't been rejected (its existence in fact barely acknowledged), even if your public reputation has been ruined and the failure of Congress to impeach you now in your current office is commonly cited as evidence of the death of Congress as an institution. In fact, you're facing civil prosecutions at home and a possible indictment in Spain for having drafted much less criminal memos than this one. Here's what you wrote to Gonzales, who had asked you on behalf of President George W. Bush to legalize aggressive wars for him:

"You have asked our Office whether the President has the authority, under both domestic and international law, to use military force against Iraq. This memorandum confirms our prior advice to you regarding the scope of the President's authority. We conclude that the President possesses constitutional authority for ordering the use of force against Iraq to protect our national interests. This independent authority is supplemented by congressional authorization in the form of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, Pub. L. No. 102-1, 105 Stat. 3 (1991), which supports the use of force to secure Iraq's compliance with its international obligations following the liberation of Kuwait, and the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001), which supports military action against Iraq if the President determines Iraq provided assistance to the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."

Now this is curious. You've already granted the president absolute authority. Then you've granted him authority on the basis of an AUMF from 1991. Now you throw in the 2001 version that allowed the attack on Afghanistan. That one will provide additional redundant authorization, you claim, if Iraq provided assistance to 9-11, or rather: if the president determines that to be the case. Congress passed yet another non-declaration of war less than two weeks before the date on your memo. This one, even if you chose to accept it as constitutional, had terms attached to it that George W. Bush had no intention of complying with and in fact violated. And none of these domestic justifications for the crime you are here "legalizing" fit with any of the international justifications you were alleging in this same memo. A war is no more authorized by the UNSC or defensive because Congress misplaces its spine or the president "determines" that pigs fly. And your arguments for the domestic legality of the war do not attempt to portray it as defensive of U.N.-approved.

So, you returned to the international arena with this thesis, to be argued for below:

"In addition, using force against Iraq would be consistent with international law, because it would be authorized by the United Nations ("U.N.") Security Council, or would be justified as anticipatory self-defense."

And you were still just clearing your throat:

"This memorandum is divided into three sections. First, we explain the background to the current conflict with Iraq, touching upon the U.N. Security Council resolutions related to the Persian Gulf War and its aftermath, and highlighting the situations in which the United States has used force against Iraq between 1991 and the present. Second, we discuss the President's authority under domestic law to direct military action against Iraq, examining both his constitutional authority and supplementary congressional support. Finally, we detail the justification under international law for the United States to use force against Iraq, considering the circumstances in which the U.N. Security Council has authorized such action and the scenarios in which it would be appropriate to use force in anticipatory self-defense."

Appropriate? If what is legal morphs into what is appropriate, and the determiner of what is appropriate is Jay Bybee, what are the law books for? And what would best make an aggressive war appropriate? Why, pretending it was simply an ordinary and even defensive continuation of a war long-since legalized. Making that case, however, would require providing some background. Forgive me if I quote and then quickly dismiss a large stinking, steaming pile of it (background). I've deleted your footnotes throughout, by the way, Mr. Bybee, simply because they are in the same vein as the rest of the document and consequently make it even worse, not better. Those wanting to read the footnotes can go to your original:

PDF.To continue reading this annotated blogger's edition of Bybee's confession to mass-murder, open one of these documents:
PDF. Word. Old Word.

--

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. To receive updates from After Downing Street register at http://afterdowningstreet.org/user/registerTo subscribe to other lists go tohttp://davidswanson.org/node/921

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:07 PM PST

Updated: Saturday, 12 December 2009 1:15 PM PST

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GITMO innocdent prisoneer released 12-2009
Mood:

incredulous
Now Playing: oooppppss! A mistake ...? Or maybe more like "abuse and neglect"
Topic: TORTURE

Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released in Kuwait

Thursday 10 December 2009

http://www.truthout.org/1210093

by: Andy Worthington, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: takomabibelot / Flickr)

The long ordeal of Fouad al-Rabiah, an innocent man and a 50-year-old father of four, who had been in US custody for almost exactly eight years, finally came to an end today, when he was flown back to his homeland of Kuwait from Guantánamo, where he had spent the majority of those lost years, after several brutal months in US custody in Afghanistan.

Until the moment of his release, everything about his treatment at the hands of the US government was shameful.Twelve weeks ago, when District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted his habeas corpus petition, and ordered his release, she revealed the most extraordinary - and extraordinarily depressing - story. This shone the most unflinching light on Guantánamo as a place where men, who were rounded up for bounty payments by the US military's allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and were never adequately screened on capture, were then sent to Guantánamo. Once there, in the absence of any information to back up the administration's claims that they were "the worst of the worst," they became the victims of false allegations made by other prisoners (who were either coerced to do so, or were bribed with the promise of improved living conditions), and were then tortured and abused to make false confessions.

During the prisoners' habeas corpus petitions over the last 14 months, numerous examples of dubious allegations made by unreliable witnesses have been exposed by the judges, as well as other examples of cases that "defie[d] common sense" or exposed the use of torture, but until al-Rabiah's case was examined, the existence of a clear chain of torture and threats inflicted to produce false confessions at Guantánamo had never been revealed with such alarming clarity.

Al-Rabiah's story began when he traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 to provide humanitarian aid, but was caught up in the chaos following the US-led invasion, and ended up in the hands of the US military. What followed was truly shameful. In Guantánamo, unreliable witnesses - whose unreliability was acknowledged by the authorities - claimed that he had met Osama bin Laden and had provided him with a suitcase of money, and also claimed that he had played a supporting role to al-Qaeda in the battle of Tora Bora, the showdown between al-Qaeda and US-supported Afghan forces in December 2001, when bin Laden escaped into Pakistan.

Under torture, which included, but was not limited to prolonged sleep deprivation - being moved from cell to cell every few hours over a period lasting for several weeks at least, in a program that was euphemistically known as the "frequent flier program" - al-Rabiah finally broke down, inventing a story to please his captors, and dutifully repeating it in 2004 during his Combatant Status Review tribunal, a military review board designed to establish that he had been correctly designated as an "enemy combatant," who could continue to be held without charge or trial.

Although the authorities knew that the witnesses were unreliable, and interrogators and other personnel cast serious doubts on al-Rabiah's story, he was, nevertheless, put forward for a trial by military commission at Guantánamo in November 2008, based on the credible-sounding story he had parroted at his tribunal, and it was only when Judge Kollar-Kotelly was able to review his case that the whole sordid story emerged.

As she noted in her ruling, in one of several passages loaded with controlled disdain for the Bush administration (and for the Obama administration for pursuing the case):

Not only did al-Rabiah's interrogators repeatedly conclude that [his] confessions were not believable - which al-Rabiah's counsel attributes to abuse and coercion, some of which is supported by the record - but it is also undisputed that al-Rabiah confessed to information that his interrogators obtained from either alleged eyewitnesses who are not credible and as to whom the Government has now largely withdrawn any reliance, or from sources that never even existed ... If there exists a basis for al-Rabiah's indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this Court.

What makes this story even more shocking is that al-Rabiah's innocence was established in the summer of 2002, when a CIA analyst and an Arabic expert interviewed him as part of a fact-finding mission to Guantánamo, which revealed that a large number of the men held "had no connection to terrorism whatsoever." As Jane Mayer described his findings about al-Rabiah in her book, "The Dark Side":

One man was a rich Kuwaiti businessman who took a trip to a different part of the world every year to do charity work. In 2001, the country he chose was Afghanistan. "He wasn't a jihadi, but I told him he should have been arrested for stupidity," the CIA officer recalled. The man was furious with the United States for rounding him up. He mentioned that every year up until then, he had bought himself a new Cadillac, but when he was released, he said, he would never buy another American car. He was switching to Mercedes.

What followed was even more disturbing and demonstrates, succinctly, how the "enemy combatant" program developed by the Bush administration was fueled by the most damaging arrogance. As Mayer explained, when John Bellinger, the legal adviser to the National Security Council (NSC), and Gen. John Gordon, the NSC's senior terrorism expert, learned of the agent's report and tried to reveal the information to President Bush to ask him to urgently review the cases of the men held at Guantánamo, a meeting with Alberto Gonzales, who was then the White House counsel, was hijacked by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's legal counsel, who dismissed their concerns by declaring, imperiously, "No, there will be no review. The President has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it!"

As Fouad al-Rabiah prepares to greet his family for the first time in over eight years, having spent the last 12 weeks detained at Guantánamo for no reason whatsoever (beyond the two weeks' notice demanded by Congress before any prisoner is released), David Cynamon, one of his attorneys, provided me by email with the following statement on behalf of the legal team that worked so hard to secure his release:

We are pleased that the US Government has at long last complied with the court order to return Mr. al-Rabiah to Kuwait. The court's opinion in his case is proof that his release is long overdue. Mr. al-Rabiah is an innocent man. His complete innocence is clearly demonstrated in the trial court's decision, which the U.S. Government did not attempt to appeal. In fact, at the very outset of Mr. al- Rabiah's confinement, the United States' own expert intelligence analyst concluded Mr. al-Rabiah was an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nonetheless, this innocent citizen of one of the United States' best allies was wrongfully imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay for almost eight years, during which he was tortured, abused, and coerced into making false confessions. We call upon President Obama to provide both a formal apology on behalf of the United States and appropriate compensation for Mr. al-Rabiah's ordeal. Mr. al- Rabiah can never reclaim the eight years he lost at Guantánamo Bay - and the United States must not simply turn and forget.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:58 AM PST

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Wednesday, 9 December 2009

The End of the Washington Times _Pink Slips coming
Mood:

cheeky
Now Playing: corporate news shame and reconfiguration for their next demise
Topic: MEDIA

The end of the Wash. Times and Rev. Moon's right-wing charity

December 08, 2009 8:42 am ET

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200912080004

You'd think that somebody with a direct line to the Almighty, and tapped by Jesus to save mankind on Earth, would be able to come up with a better business plan for running a daily newspaper. But, alas, after nearly three decades of unrelenting financial losses, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a federal tax cheat, accused cult leader, and founder of the Unification Church, has decided to pull out. Actually, according to news reports, it's more like Moon's U.S. college-educated sons, as part of an internal family power struggle, have decided to finally cut off the endless stream of Asian church cash that's kept The Washington Times afloat.

With the announcement that 40 percent of the Times' staff is getting pink-slipped, and that the daily's no longer even going to bother with traditional who/what/where/when/why reporting, instead publishing an opinion-heavy publication that will be free of charge at a diminished number of local outlets, Times owners look like they're angling to be a Weekly Standard wannabe, churning out lots of predictable GOP Noise Machine opinion prattle. (Paging Andrew Breitbart!) What is clear is that the daily's days as a functioning newspaper are now over.

R.I.P. The Washington Times.

At this time of reflection, it's worth pondering two rather astonishing facets about the Times and its bizarre life and looming death. The first is the deep irony of how the Times, a clarion voice of partisan right-wing values, was run as a charity for nearly three decades and whose business model made a mockery of the free-marketplace system supposedly cherished by conservatives. The second is the even deeper irony of how the Times was owned by a delusional prophet whose apocalyptic visions made an even bigger mockery of the Christian values supposedly cherished by conservative activists.

Indeed, the woeful Times has for decades stood at the center of a Beltway marriage-of-convenience for the ages, as conservatives nearly developed cataracts turning a collective blind eye to the glaringly obvious contradictions that Moon's worldview created with conservatives. (FYI, Moon proclaims to be more powerful than God, that Jesus was a failure, and that dictatorial rule is best. Hmm.....)

The failed Times venture was nonetheless a shining example of how conservative ideologues view journalism. To them, it's not a craft to be used for public good (or even to make money, as it turns out), but a tool to be used for mainly propaganda purposes. And specifically, in Moon's case, it was used to impress his friends back in Seoul, South Korea, and to inflate the influence of his Unification Church.

The messianic Moon, who has referred to himself as "humanity's Savior," never cared about journalism in the traditional, American, free-marketplace sense of the word. Yes, he launched a product that looked like a newspaper, but its central goal was never really to inform its readers. Its goal seemed more often to misinform and to enhance Moon's reputation outside the United States. Moon and Unification Church leaders used the newspaper as a symbol, most often in Asia, to suggest that Moon moved freely among world leaders. That the newspaper in 2009 had a modest circulation roughly matching that of the Chattanooga Times Free Press was irrelevant to the paper's publishers, although the newspaper's evaporating readership probably was not lost on the Times' shrinking band of local advertisers.

Now, I'm not a press hater. And unlike conservative media critics, I don't take pleasure in watching news orgs struggle financially. I don't relish a world with fewer hard-working journalists. (I think democracies are best served with more journalists.) But I am hard-pressed to think of one thing that will be missed about the Times.

Indeed, the problem most recently wasn't that the Times was a Moonie newspaper, per se; it was that the Times became a chronically dishonest, and often proudly hateful, one. Indeed, the Moonie connection over time became largely irrelevant, in part because the Unification Church today barely even exists as a religious entity in America. (Experts suggest the movement boasts less than 5,000 members nationwide.)

The real problem, and the real damage the daily was doing to public discourse, was that the Times, like the rest of the right-wing movement post-Obama Inauguration Day, ran off the rails in 2009. And much like Fox News, it cut whatever ceremonial newsroom ties it still had with actual journalism.

I'm tempted to call the Times a failed news experiment. But it seems obvious that Moon knew it was going to fail financially, so it wasn't really an experiment. In other words, Moon may be the only big-city publisher in American history who set out to launch a money-losing newspaper; the only big-city American publisher who honestly did not care, nor did he ever expect, his newspaper to turn a profit -- or even come close.

Moon and the Times' parent company never open their books, but it's been estimated the self-proclaimed messiah has spent nearly $3 billion propping up the right-wing daily since its inception in 1982. As the paper now implodes, Moon is certainly the proud owner of the most expensive failed newspaper in the world, and it's possible that the Times stands as the most expensive failed American news property. Ever.

The irony, of course, is that the American conservative movement proudly -- and loudly -- worships at the altar of the marketplace. (No handouts!) And specifically when it comes to the media marketplace, the movement insists newspapers can no longer sustain themselves, in part, because they're so liberal that they've lost touch with news consumers, and that's why subscribers are abandoning the dailies. And that's why the dailies deserve to fail.

But oops, The Washington Times (not to mention the right-wing New York Post) has been losing subscribers by the tens-of-thousands in recent years, and if ever left strictly to the beloved marketplace, the Times would have been shuttered years ago for the simple reason that (surprise!) there is no mass market demand for the often shoddy right-wing product.

As a for-profit business, The Washington Times could never sustain itself. Period. So instead, its right-wing ideologue owner supported the daily as a form of conservative welfare -- as a charity. The Times was run for decades as sort of right-wing workfare project as Moon created hundreds of unneeded newsroom jobs, paid for in the name of giving its owner a (money-losing) media platform.

Of course the other glaring disconnect (or blatant hypocrisy, if you prefer) was the way the strongly Evangelical-flavored conservative movement embraced a free-spending media baron who, thanks to his own fantastic claims of divinity and looming world domination, made a mockery out of Christian traditions.

Behold:

I am God's ambassador, sent to earth with his full authority. I am sent to accomplish his command to save the world's six billion people, restoring them to heaven with the original goodness in which they were created. The five great saints and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murders on earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways, and been reborn as new persons.

For those who might not know, the Korean-born Moon claims that at the age of 16, Jesus appeared to him in the mountains, on an Easter Sunday, and told him he'd been selected by God to accomplish the mission Jesus himself was unable to complete before he was crucified. Moon's task as God's new Messiah was to create "an "automatic theocracy to rule the world." (aka the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.)

Yikes.

And as former Unification Church official Michael Warder once told The New Republic, "Within the Moon movement, there is no foundation for the ideas of freedom, the rule of law and the dignity of the individual as they are understood in the West."

Double yikes.

Recall that a 1978 congressional investigation reported "reliable information" tying Moon's church to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

Triple yikes.

And don't forget that Moon was convicted of falsifying records in order to avoid paying income taxes.

Quadruple yikes.

And this: Moon claims to have communicated with God, Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed. Moon also claims to have freed Adolf Hitler from hell, and that 36 former U.S. presidents have all endorsed him from beyond the grave.

What that kind of brazen nuttiness ever had to do with conservative values remains a mystery. But the Moonie checks were cashed all over town as Beltway conservative activists embraced Moon and his largesse, which for decades poured into right-wing think tanks. It paid for elaborate anti-communism conferences; it lined the pockets of high-profile guest speakers; and of course sustained a newspaper that could not otherwise sustain itself.

It kept alive a newspaper that utterly failed in the marketplace.

And no, I can't say I'm going to miss The Washington Times.

See comments here: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200912080004

Posted by Joe Anybody at 9:40 PM PST

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Tuesday, 8 December 2009

I am supporting Dennis Kucinich in his anti-war resolutions
Mood:

caffeinated
Now Playing: Kucinich and his efforts to stop this war
Topic: WAR

Kucinich Resolution to End the War Dear Friends,

(December 9, 2009) Congressman Dennis Kucinich is circulating two "privileged resolutions" to trigger votes to end the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Congressman Kucinich, in a written release, earlier today stated: "Today, I will begin circulating two privileged resolutions which will trigger debate and votes on a timely withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan."

"Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States makes it Congress' responsibility to determine whether or not we go to war or stay at war. Consistent with Article I, Section 8, the privileged resolutions will invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973. I ask for your support of these resolutions, which will be introduced in the House in January."

"Yesterday, with the U.S. Secretary of Defense at his side, the President of Afghanistan declared that his country's security forces will need financial and training assistance from the United States for the next 15-20 years."

"We cannot afford these wars. We cannot afford the loss of lives. We cannot afford the cost to taxpayers. We cannot afford to fail to exercise our constitutional right to end the wars."

"Please sign onto the privileged resolutions to end the wars and to bring our troops home."

"Stand up for our troops. Stand up for the truth. Stand up for the Constitution and Congress' responsibility."

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 9 December 2009 2:00 PM PST

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Monday, 7 December 2009

The Factory
Mood:

not sure
Now Playing: LED's & USB's help create pollution, and capitalisms poverty
Topic: TECHNOLOGY

The Factory

By John Biggs on December 7, 2009

The driver pulled up to a small office complex in the heart of the city and beckoned us into the back of his scuffed white van. The surface of the vehicle was caked in dust and the seats, clad in new blue velvet, were sized for someone much smaller. I curled up in the back and we were off into the city, cars coming at all sides and bikes darting out in front of the unflappable driver, his smile never wavering as we drove.

I was on my way to a factory outside of Shenzhen, a city of 14 million people mostly dedicated to the manufacture of the things we buy. If it beeps, makes phone calls, or increasingly, if you can wear it, it’s probably come from out here. We roll through the city to the outskirts and then onto a wide five-lane highway that rolls up through the smog, past rocks and hills that look like a stage set for a Kung Fu fable. This is modern China, a place of conflicting images and a world of untrammeled growth.

The factories are about forty minutes outside of town in a special economic area dedicated to commerce. Sadly, the smoke from the endless stream of cars and trucks heading back and forth from the manufacturing center along with whatever is coming out of the factories themselves casts a pall on the landscape; little can be done about that right now, though. Motorcycles are outlawed here for safety and environmental reasons, and if this van is indicative of the current state of repair of many work vehicles, it’s going to take a long time to scrub this city’s skies clean again. Most of this most recent smog comes thanks to this chilly November. People outside of town – and in – are burning wood. It won’t get clear again until the Spring and then the Summer will bring idling cars, their air conditioners cranked up in the heat.

We trundle along into the economic zone, down long roads lined with people returning from work. We narrowly miss a man on a bike and we pass electric cycles carrying huge, heavy loads of plastic and other scrap. This zone is where the factory workers live and raise families. There are no street lights and I see children meeting their parents after work, silhouetted by the lights of a stream of cars.

We pull into a guarded complex of smaller factories. The man I’m here to see runs a company that makes USB keys. I probably have twenty of his products, all of them given to me by PR people, in a jar at home and don’t even know it. He has clients all over the world and most don’t even know they’re doing business with him. A chain of distributors come to him to make the finished product. When people say “OEM,” this is who they’re talking about.

I climb up the dark stairway into a wood-paneled office area where sales and marketing people sit. I sit down with the president who offers me a water and a cigarette. He shows me his new selection of LED lights: he’s coming in on the ground floor with these just as compact fluorescents are leaving the realm of the profitable and moving into the commodity. He’s betting on these new lights to take him through the next decade.

He’s been doing this for about seven years. He used to work in integrated circuits but he bought a few used Japanese PCB manufacturing machines and started making devices for clients. He stuck with USB keys because it’s a steady market and he lives comfortably.

We walk into the factory. This is no “Intel Inside” clean room. A dozen long benches run through the room. There are ten old Dells with CRT monitors for quality control and a line of soldering irons at the ready. It’s late – about 6pm – so everyone is home. During the day the factory is full of people. All of them are making USB keys and the company can punch out about 30,000 a day, a minuscule number compared to the capacity of the behemoths down the road.

The keys start out as circuit boards. There are about five keys per board and they come already milled to specifications. One employee lays down a layer of solder and puts the board through to the SMT machine. SMT stands for surface mount technology; it’s a way to tell a robot how and where to place resistors, transistors, and capacitors on a board. The machines here are old. They still use 3.5″ floppies to program them and they’re all in Japanese. They cost about $100,000 each, now, used. The better ones can hit the $1 million mark.

The first SMT machine grabs tiny components from a long reel of electronic parts. It’s a mad dance. The hand – a box with pistons, really – picks the part and then places it. Pick, place, pick, place. It takes about a minute to do a set of five. Another employee checks the work and then it moves on. There’s plenty of room of error here simply because this is a commodity. The machine breaks down, it places transistors a bit skew. It doesn’t matter. In the end it’s going to hold whatever data you put on it, at least for a while. The dead devices go back into the recycling bin.

The second SMT places the IC chips, the controllers and the memory. A final employee spot checks the board and sends it out to the soldering line. There they solder on each USB port by hand. The PCB itself costs maybe 50 cents to manufacture – that’s only parts – but the IC and the memory add about three dollars more. In the end, you’re looking at about $5 in costs, including labor. The final step is the application, by hand, of the silk screen, embossing, or laser etching. Each piece. By hand. The margin is slim at best, especially considering distributors sell these things to customers for about $7.

So is this a place of horror? No. This is where men and women are given a wage and living quarters to make USB keys. There are few amenities here, no child care, no donuts at lunch. The toilets are squat toilets; the sinks are overflowing into the bathroom. The lockers are six inches by six inches. Enough for shoes, maybe, and a jacket.

But this is how this stuff is made. Bigger companies won’t touch these orders – a run of 1000 pieces to them isn’t even worth the energy it takes to start up the machines. This factory fills a hole in the market. The employer fills a hole in the employee’s life. The employee lives in a free house and comes to a steady job. It’s hard, to be sure, and it’s a mess — but it’s a living.

We moved our manufacturing over here. That’s what happened. To say this is good or bad, positive or negative, is not my place. The employees here are content and the owner has a nice car and is planning a vacation to the US next year. On a micro scale, this is what countless small businesses have done all over the world for about two centuries. You fill a need. You fill an order.

On the macro scale you can cry and moan about exploitation, pollution, and capitalism. Pittsburgh was probably once as dirty as Shenzhen is right now. Blue laws were put into place there early on to prevent desolate employees from drinking themselves into an oblivion. We changed, and China will change.

My fear, however, is that we’ve become inured to the way things are made here. We love how our phones spring to life a touch of a button. We love how we can buy a terabyte of disk space for $100. We love how Moore’s law is always punching something new across the transom. But consumption clouds the true value of this stuff. We need to rethink what we buy and expect more from the companies that try to sell it to us. This is a mom and pop USB factory. Someone like Foxconn, manufacturers of the iPhone, are a different animal entirely. But both are part of the menagerie that is Chinese manufacturing. It’s globalized. It’s monstrous. It caused this smoke and this darkness and this mind-numbing work. Don’t be fooled by clean rooms and white walls you see on TV with magical robot arms carrying iPhones into the heavens. This is dirty work and it will get dirtier.

This is an industrial process to fulfill our desire. Shenzhen, and this small factory on her outskirts, show us the price of that desire.

Next: Order Fulfillment

TO READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE OR THE COMMENTS CLICK HERE

21 Comments

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 8 December 2009 9:37 AM PST

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